[Jesus said:] “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went away. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way. Then he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”
Matthew 21:33-46
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:
‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes’?
“Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”
When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.
My sermon from the 19th Sunday after Pentecost (October 4, 2026) on Matthew 21:33-46.
One of the things we should remember about Jesus is that he knows what he’s doing. He knows when his actions might upset those in power and when his words will get under people’s skin. Jesus’ ministry wasn’t only about making people feel whole and happy. He also made those who were comfortable squirm in their seats. The tone Jesus used to tell stories wasn’t passive, spiritual, light, and carefree. He was also sarcastic, biting, and a bit over the top. Our Jesus was the kind of Jesus who rolled his eyes when the disciples asked which one of them was the greatest and who also got so mad at a fig tree he caused it to shrivel up and die. This matters, I think, because the stories Jesus told weren’t meant only for those living 2000 years after his death and resurrection. These words meant something to those who he was immediately speaking to. The care, comfort, love, hope, joy, challenge, and annoyance those around Jesus experienced wasn’t pretend. And when Jesus talked to those who didn’t agree with him, they often knew exactly what Jesus was trying to say.
Today’s reading is a continuation of what we heard last week. Jesus, according to Matthew, had just entered the city of Jerusalem on a donkey before tossing over a few tables and causing chaos in the Holy Temple on one of its busiest days. Jesus’ popularity had grown and all kinds of people gathered around him when he was preaching in holy spaces within the city. Yet his actions and words seemed designed to upset the delicate balance the community had already established with the occupying Roman Empire. Those in power asked Jesus to tell them what authority allowed him to do these things. Jesus didn’t respond directly but he wasn’t being coy with his words. He, instead, told them two stories he knew they wouldn’t like. The first involved two children who lied to their dad. He asked them to work in the vineyard and one said yes – but didn’t – and the other said no – but eventually did. There are many reasonable interpretations for that story but I invited us to recognize what the kids had. They had access to a vineyard their lies couldn’t take away. The second story, which I just read, also involved a vineyard. But instead of being centered around the actions of two kids, we meet tenants who refused to pay their rent.
Now this might be the most violent story Jesus ever told and it’s one we often use in problematic ways. When we see it as some kind of biblical roadmap predicting Jesus’ life, we can reduce the Cross into something less violent than what a crucifixion truly was. God’s plan does bring us a sense of peace and comfort especially with life gets hard. But when we turn God’s work into simply checking off boxes on a checklist, we forget how Jesus lived this life too. This parable, especially verse 43, has also been used to justify Christian violence against the Jewish community. We act as if God has decided we’re the ones who get to replace God’s chosen people. It’s an interpretation by those who want their insecurities, anxieties, and fears to become everyone else’s problems too. Rather than admitting how fragile, hard, amazing, and difficult life can be, we do whatever we can to try and dominate it. Life, we proclaim, should have winners and losers regardless of who gets in the way. And when God and eternity becomes something we try to control, too many people end up on Crosses of our own making. A violent parable can influence a violent theology that believes itself to be holy and true. Yet when we weaken the Cross or multiply them in the lives of others, it reveals how we’re not listening to what Jesus said. We end up creating a faith with a God we can control. Jesus, however, reminds us over and over again that it’s God – and not us – who decides what God will do.
Those who first heard Jesus tell this story, knew what Jesus was getting at. He was simply describing what the faithful tend to do. We act as if our grasp on God is pretty solid and we don’t need a word from God that challenges who we know ourselves to be. The religious leaders knew Jesus was talking about them and how the most certain can make violence their friend. Jesus is being very blunt which isn’t how we often experience him since he regularly used our imaginations to grow our experience of God. Yet whenever we try to control who our God chooses to be, God says no. When we make ourselves God’s chosen rather than recognizing how God chooses us; when we make love and grace into a commodity that only some are allowed to have; when we act as if God has nothing new to speak into our lives; and when we act as if we are the center of it all, Jesus reminds us we are not. God is God and that’s a gift we should be eternally grateful for. Because if we were God, building Crosses rather than living through them would be the story of our lives. Care, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness would end up being something we only offered to our friends. And loving our enemies or breaking bread with those we can’t stand or offering forgiveness wouldn’t be the story we would tell. A Creation, universe, and existence defined only by us is one that will always be too limited for love. The blunt word Jesus shared wasn’t only about the ways we revert to violence when God’s kingdom comes near. He also pointed out how all of this doesn’t belong to us. Nowhere in Jesus’ story were the tenants identified as poor caretakers. We can assume they were able to produce in abundant ways. Yet those who were in the vineyard acted as if what they were given was something they were always entitled to. Rather than recognizing the vineyard, their jobs, their resources, and even their existence as a precious gift, they lived as if they were all there is. When we refuse to trust the possibility there might be more, there’s no story beyond ourselves that we could ever tell. Jesus’ blunt message is a reminder there is always something beyond what we’ve done and what’s been done to us. And that’s because we have a God who keeps promises and it’s God’s love, grace, guidance, and hope that will carry us through.
Amen.